Monday, December 24, 2012

Santa Self



Santa Self has delivered us another great gift this year.  Despite losing two top players from a National Champion finalist team last year in Thomas Robinson and Tyshawn Taylor, Santa Self has wrapped up a team heavy with seniors and freshmen that continues to get stronger.  A big win on road in Columbus, Ohio last Saturday was a holiday treat for us all.

This 2012-2013 college basketball season is proving to be a weak one, not only nationally, but in the Big XII as well.  Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News has the Big XII ranked 8th among conferences, behind such power leagues as the Mountain West, Atlantic 10, Pac-12, and the round ball challenged SEC.  It wasn’t too long ago that the Big XII had moved up into the top two or three basketball conferences.  Missouri jumping to the SEC certainly didn’t help.  Even though the Tigers have the 146th ranked strength of schedule (Rivals.com’s RPI Ratings), they are 10-1 and would probably be Kansas’ biggest challengers this season if they had stayed put.  Missouri and Texas A&M were replaced by a horrible basketball school in TCU (only scored 31 in a game this season and have scored less than 50 in several others) and a very disappointing West Virginia, 6-5, 111 RPI).  The conference only has three teams in the RPI top 40 – Kansas (2), Oklahoma St. (20), and Oklahoma (25).  Only three teams have played a schedule ranked in the top 60 – Kansas (3), OU (13), and Baylor (26).  Three teams have schedules ranked lower than 200 – Kansas St. (215), TCU (283), and Texas Tech (298).  I have long believed that many of the Big XII schools historically don’t schedule a tough enough slate.  KU and Texas usually are the only teams that play stronger teams on a regular basis. 

Be that as it may, Kansas is ranked 7th in the AP and 2nd in the RPI with the 3rd toughest schedule in the country.  I think Santa Self has done a great job of picking some of the strongest mid-major teams year in and year out to play.  I think that is why his strength of schedule is so high.  Throw in teams like Colorado and Temple, on top of the likes of Michigan State and Ohio State, and he has a competitive schedule against several good to decent teams Kansas should beat. 

Santa Self also does a terrific job being patient with his teams.  He lets them grow as players throughout the pre-conference schedule.  His teams generally make a leap forward about this time of year as he has much more practice time between semesters to put in more plays.  Kansas usually hits their stride come the conference part of the schedule.  Barring something disastrous, Kansas should stroll away through the Big XII this season and win their 9th straight conference title.  That would be an amazing accomplishment.

One of the things Santa Self does best is to reload each year.  Year after year, KU loses a big chunk of their points, rebounds, assists, and minutes to graduation (it should also be noted that Santa Self's players graduate at a very high rate) or the NBA.  Several higher echelon schools go through this.  It also seems that Santa Self has something left in his stocking for the next season, even when it doesn’t always appear that he does.  This year, he was left with four seniors, three of whom started in the National Championship game last April. 

After KU beat Richmond a couple of weeks ago, Chris Mooney, the Spiders’ coach, said he was surprised when he started watching film on the Jayhawks.  He couldn’t believe a school on the level of Kansas would have four senior starters.  In this day and age of one and done players, the top tier teams are often hit the worst by this.  One of the CBS announcers on Saturday, I think it was Greg Anthony, also mentioned the anomaly of a school like Kansas having four seniors during the Ohio State telecast.  Santa Self does a terrific job of getting a lot of his players that are not one and done talent to stay the course and convinces them that they can be major contributors down the road.  He does it year after year.  Players who don’t play much as freshmen or sophomores end up playing huge roles on very good teams by the time they are juniors and seniors.  Santa Self and his staff are obviously coaching these kids up, even when they are not playing a lot of minutes in games.  It always seems to pay off.

This team has the four seniors, one sophomore with significant playing time in Nadir Tharpe, and the other five guys who get to play in varying degrees are freshmen (not counting the walk-ons or junior Justin Wesley).  The four seniors are not the most talented or athletic players in the country but they all do many things very well.  They all bring something important to the table.  They have all been role players in the past but are now the leaders.  They all know what Santa Self requires of them and they work together to win games.  Talking heads always go on about how important senior leadership is come NCAA tournament time.  That theory will be tested in March as Kansas tries for back to back Final Fours. 

Kansas can look very good (Colorado, Belmont, Richmond) but they are happy to win ugly too (Chattanooga, Ohio State).  The ugly wins don’t count less than the pretty ones.  Kansas has a very good chance, because of their strong non-conference schedule and an apparently weaker than usual Big XII, to mount a pretty big win total by tournament time.  Unless something unforeseen happens (never want to count chickens before they hatch), Kansas should be in a prime position to garner a #1 seed, and no lower than a #2 seed.  With senior leadership, it would a great gift to the fans for the Jayhawks to return to the Final Four and maybe even the Finals.  Santa Self has delivered before; he can do it again.  Check your list Santa Self; we have been very good this year!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season!

Get TV and movie reviews at jawsrecliner.blogspot.com and follow me on twitter @jawrecliner.  Thanks for reading.

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